Best Friend - Friend from Hell

The following exercise focuses on what students like best - least about friends. The exercise allows students to practice a number of areas: expressing opinions, comparatives and superlatives, descriptive adjectives and reported speech. The overall concept of the lesson can easily be transferred to other subject areas such as: holiday choices, choosing a school, perspective careers, etc.

Aim: Practice expressing opinions, reported speech

Activity: Choosing which qualities would make a best friend and which qualities would make an undesirable friend

Level:Pre-intermediate to upper-intermediate

Outline:

• Help students activate vocabulary by asking them for descriptive adjectives describing good friends and bad friends.
• Distribute worksheet to students and ask them to put the descriptive adjectives/phrases into the two categories (Best Friend - Undesirable Friend).
• Put students into pairs and ask them to give explanations for why they have chosen to put the various descriptions into one or the other of the categories.
• Ask students to pay careful attention to what their partner says and take notes, as they will be expected to report back to a new partner.
• Put students into new pairs and ask them to tell their new partner what their first partner has said.
• As a class, ask students about any surprises or differences of opinion they encountered during the discussions.
• Extend the lesson by a follow-up discussion on what makes a good friend.

confident in his/her abilities handsome or beautiful trustworthy outgoing timid punctual intelligent fun-loving rich or well off artistic abilities inquisitive mind possess athletic abilities well-traveled creative free spirit speaks English well interested in the same things interested in different things from the same social background from different social background loves to tell stories rather reserved ambitious plans for the future happy with what he/she has

Step 2: Take notes on the preferences of your partner

Worksheet Prinout

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